Real Survival Stories - Hawaii Wildfire: Island in Flames (Part 1 of 2)

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Annelise Cochran is a marine conservationist who lives a tranquil life in Hawaii. But in 2023, the island paradise she calls home transforms into a hellish inferno. As a colossal wildfire tears through her historic seaside town, the terrified locals take refuge along a small strip of coastline. There, Annelise will be forced into a terrifying decision… A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Annelise is a listener to the show who got in touch with her incredible story. If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's Tuesday, August the 8th, 2023, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, just before 5 p.m. A column of black smoke rises above the coastal town of Lahaina. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds screech down desolate streets, fueling the spread of a massive, uncontrollable wildfire. Flames leap from building to building, engulfing timber frame houses, devouring historic landmarks and reducing palm-lined boulevards to scorched earth. The fire has formed a horseshoe-shaped ring around the town. From the north, south and east, the blaze works its way seaward,

steadily advancing towards a narrow strip of coastline where local residents and tourists have rushed to escape and where they now find themselves surrounded. Among them, sitting behind the wheel of her idling car, is 30-year-old Annalise Cochran. With the roads blocked, terrified people have started hurling themselves into the rough ocean, trading one extreme for another. You saw people kind of choosing all of those different things. There was people on the land still,

there was people that were sitting on the rocks, there was people who were kind of kneeling in the water, and then there was also people who had begun to grab debris. There was tons of debris because the buildings were just falling apart from the wind. And so people were grabbing onto stuff and floating out with that. I could tell there was at least a hundred people and the people that were drifting out into the ocean were drifting out farther than I could see them. They were disappearing out into the smoke. Annalise watches on in silent horror sooner or later she'll be forced to leave her car and throw herself on the mercy of the churning waves

ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Annalise Cochran. She's a marine conservationist living a life of blissful contentment in Lahaina, a historic seaside town on Maui in Hawaii. That is, until the afternoon of August 8, 2023, when everything changes.

A deadly wildfire, driven by strong winds, will descend on the quiet community, forcing thousands to flee their homes. I didn't know exactly how close I was to the fire. We had seen flames about a block away as we decided to leave, but the difference between the fire being two blocks away and one block away was a matter of seconds. That was kind of the moment that I realized, like, I am trapped in, like, a horseshoe ring of fire, and my only out is the ocean. I'm John Hopkins.

From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. The End It's midday on Tuesday, August 8th, 2023, in the quaint seaside town of Lahaina. Annalise is at home, pottering about in her apartment. Outside, palm trees and power lines thrash about in high winds. All morning, gusts of over 80 miles an hour have been battering the small community, forcing business closures, and keeping most of Lahaina's 13,000 residents indoors. Weather like this is not uncommon on Maui. The island is located squarely in the path of powerful southwesterly trade winds. But even for this blustery island, today's gusts seem to be blowing with an unusual intensity.

Anneliese glances up at the windows, rattling in their frames. Her apartment is located on the ground floor of a low-income housing complex, right in the heart of Lahaina town. It isn't much, but it's everything the 30-year-old needs. It's home. Photographs of her friends and family adorn the walls. Pinned to the fridge is a picture of Annalise with her colleagues from the Pacific Whale Foundation, the marine conservation non-profit where she's worked for the last eight years.

I have always had a deep love for the ocean. It started when I was young. Way before I went to college in Florida, my family would take Easter trips down to a beautiful little island off the coast of Florida. And I just remember sitting in the sand and waiting all day just to see a glimpse of a dolphin. And it just sealed my love of those particular animals. And I started to find a lot of comfort in the ocean. Annalise grew up just outside of Washington, D.C. But over the course of these family holidays to Florida, her interest in the underwater world developed into a passion. Parental encouragement also played a part. My dad had also been a huge ocean fanatic.

Prior to my birth, he had been a scuba diver, abalone diver. He was a cool guy. He was an Eagle Scout, and he cared a lot about teaching his kids to be strong and prepared and independent. He unfortunately passed when I was 15 years old. And I think that really defined a lot of who I am.

Both the lessons that I had learned growing up around the ocean and just loving being in the water, but also the safety lessons that come from having an Eagle Scout dad and also going through certifications like scuba training. You know, as soon as I got my dive certification, we'd start to go on trips just for the two of us where we could go and do dives. And I'm really blessed that I got the chance to get in the water with him. At college, Annalise majored in environmental science. And after graduation, she began looking for work in marine conservation. It took about a year of applying and hoping

before eventually she received the offer she'd been waiting for, a seasonal staff position with a whale-watching company in Lahaina. She flew out for what was supposed to be a single tourist season. But after six months in Hawaii, she wasn't ready to leave. She stayed for another six months. And another. And then it just turned into like, one more season, one more season, one more season, because I fell in love with the place.

The whales and dolphins were awesome, but Lahaina town was magical. It was such an amazing community of people. There was such a deeply rooted culture. And so like the stories that you hear about, they happened where you're walking every day. You know, Lahaina, the town where I lived and where I worked out of was at one point the kingdom of Hawaii. It was where the kings lived. There was a palace. They had lined the streets with lavish breadfruit trees. You're like walking on history with every step you're taking in Lahaina and you felt that.

It was a beautiful place to be. And so I just couldn't leave. Once I was there, I was just totally captivated. Annalise has made close friends. She's become an active part of the town's tight-knit community. Professionally, things are going well too. After just a few years,

she was promoted up the chain of command to second mate, directly overseeing the entire fleet of whale-watching boats out of Lahaina Harbour. It was just really blessed. I was just making big moves in my career and was loving where I was at and really felt like I had found home there. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada.

Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. Today is a Tuesday, a work day for Annalise. But due to the high winds, her company can't take any boats out, so she's been told to stay home. I'd had the day off of work, which was kind of fun. And it was not a nice day to go out and enjoy Hawaii, but I realized that because the winds were so strong, it had been blowing palm fronds into the roads. And so I had gone outside and I had gathered some of the palm fronds and brought them into my apartment and was cutting them apart and making little woven palm frond roses.

Kind of like a local craft because I couldn't get any of my work done. And so I was like, well, I'll just sit here and do a little craft in my apartment. As she folds and weaves the palm fronds a quiet chirping drifts over from a birdcage in the corner of the room smiling annelise stands and goes over to it a few days ago she rescued a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest as a devoted conservationist annelise would typically nurse the animal back to health before returning it to the wild. But this particular bird belongs to an invasive species, so rather than letting it go, she decided to keep the flightless, featherless chick as a pet.

She's named it Chickadee. After feeding Chickadee its midday meal, Annalise checks her computer for local weather updates. Earlier today, reports of a nearby wildfire were circulating on social media. Wildfires have always been a fixture of Hawaiian life. But with climate change leading to reduced rainfall, they're becoming increasingly common. As a result, Maui's local authority closely monitors weather events and has introduced a sophisticated system of alerts to notify residents of any potential danger. But when Anneliese tries to open her newsfeed, she finds the internet won't load.

Strange. Maybe the high winds have caused a power outage. She picks up her phone and calls her mom, who lives 3,000 miles away in Maryland. I had called my mom because I was having some internet connection issues. It was taking forever for a page to load, or some pages wouldn't load at all. And so I called her and was like, hey, can you check a couple of these pages for me? I see that there's a fire. So she looked and she's like, no, you know, they've cleared it.

They said it's 100% contained already. I'm looking at the updates right now, like there's a fire. So she looked and she's like, no, you know, they've cleared it. They said it's 100% contained already. I'm looking at the updates right now, like there was a fire. So you might see some smoke and you might smell it, but like, nope, says it's 100% contained. So you're all good. The authorities must be completely certain before declaring a wildfire 100% contained. The fact that they've released a statement is reassuring. Annalise returns to her palm fronds and wiles away another couple of hours. Then, at around 3pm, she stops what she's doing and sniffs the air, frowning.

Getting up from her chair, she goes to the front door and opens it. Aside from the abnormally strong winds, it's a typical Maui day. Bright sunshine and blue skies, the summer air fragrant with hibiscus flowers and mango. But Annalise thinks she can detect something else on the breeze. Smoke. Turning to her left, she sees her elderly next-door neighbor, Freeman, leaning on his doorframe, quietly watching the world go by. Annalise calls out to him. And so I shouted over, you know, hello.

And I asked him, I was like, hey, Freeman, I'm smelling something in the air. It smells like smoke. Do you smell something right now? And he was a little bit elderly. He said he didn't smell anything. And so I attributed it to just like, well, I knew there was a fire up the mountain. All of this smoke is blowing this way in the wind and the winds are strong.

They were whistling like crazy. And so it's probably just some ash, some debris, some smoke that's blowing down the mountain towards us. And so I didn't think a ton of it. Annalise steps back inside her apartment. To help pass the time, she decides to take a long, leisurely shower. About an hour later, she's stepping out of her bathroom, dressed and wringing the last few drops of water

from her hair, when suddenly the piercing wail of smoke detectors shatters the peace and quiet. Can the wind really be blowing smoke all the way down from the mountain? Annalise hurries outside. The sky was not blue anymore. It wasn't black yet, but it was very dark, dark brown and kind of orangey. And it would, as the wind was blowing, it would blow small clearings out where sometimes you'd see this, you know, flash of the blue sky and it would almost look like you're like, oh, wait, it is daytime. And then it would turn brown again. It would look like nighttime and that was super alarming because just an hour ago it was blue skies a bunch of my neighbors were sort of gathering out front of my apartment and sort of communicating with one another to figure out what exactly was going on we were trying to compare

notes of you know has anybody gotten an evacuation text has anybody been able to see anything online about this and we were all so confused because we had all seen like there was a fire, but it was contained. They said it was contained. The sky now turns a deep shade of orange. The wind carries the distinct aroma of wood smoke and burning leaves. Annalise trusts the local authorities. She knows that if there was an emergency, the Hyena's public alarm system would have sounded by now. But even so. If her experience working on boats has taught her anything, it's to hope for the best and plan for the worst. So while her neighbors continue to mutter anxiously among themselves,

Annalise ducks back inside her apartment and hastily starts packing a go-bag. I just started grabbing the things that I had always said I would grab, which was my jewelry box that had jewelry from a lot of my deceased family members, things that were precious and irreplaceable. I had this drawer of paper scraps that I was scrapbooking, so concert tickets, airplane tickets, Polaroid pictures of my friends, just like all these memories of little things from my life. And I took that entire drawer and I dumped it into one of those Tarp Ikea bags, God bless Ikea, and threw my jewelry box into there.

Finally, Annalise grabs Chickadee's birdcage. Then, with the bag slung over one shoulder, she rushes out to the parking lots and stashes her precious items on the back seat, just in case. She then heads back to the front of the building, where her neighbors are still congregated. By now the situation has escalated even further. Plumes of black smoke billow overhead, partially blotting out the sun. Fiery debris drifts down like snowflakes.

Embers have started to land on the roofs of houses, where they continue to crackle and burn. It's becoming clearer by the second this is a serious fire, and it is getting closer. One of Annalise's neighbors, a man named Steve, has taken matters into his own hands. As we were talking, Steve was spraying them with a hose, and at first it was like one ember would fall and he'd put it out, and another one would fall and he'd put it out. And then it was like six would fall and he could put three out, and then 12 fall and he could put another five out and then 40 would fall. And it was just like

getting exponential. And you could just see that there was no holding back those embers at that point. Hearing cries of alarm, Annalise turns her head. Bright orange flames flicker hungrily above the rooftops one block to the south, each gust of wind pushing them ever closer to the housing complex. Still, there are no sirens, no texts to evacuate. But their own eyes confirm it's time to go. There's a flurry of panicked activity as people begin dashing inside to grab car keys, along with any last-minute personal effects. Others start taking off on foot.

Before rushing to her car, Annalise seeks out two fellow residents with whom she's developed a close relationship, her elderly neighbor, Freeman, and a kindly middle-aged woman named Atina. Atina. Atina was a woman who lived upstairs from me. She was in the apartment right above mine. And she is a woman who is like a saint walking on this earth. She is the most kind, incredible woman.

She had such a big heart. She was the kind of woman who would stop everything she was doing and ask you if you needed help, if she saw even an inclination that something was wrong. Annalise rushes over to Etina and Freeman. She urges them to get in her car. They need to evacuate now. But Freeman, who was born in Lahaina some 80 years ago, doesn't want to go anywhere.

He's a little unsteady on his feet, and he doesn't feel comfortable leaving the security of his own apartment. He shakes his head and retreats back into his doorway. Atina was not going to have that. None of us would. But Atina especially was just too close with him. So she told him he needed to come out and he said no, that he was going to stay. And she goes, okay, well then I'm staying with with you and she walked into his apartment and she sat down on the couch and this is the kind of woman that Atina was that was not a show she would have sat there the entire night she would have easily given up her life just to be with him as he gave up his and it's just

hard to wrap my head around that and the second that she walked into his apartment sat down the couch it clicked for Freeman and he knew like he would put himself in danger but he would never put atina in danger finally freeman agrees to leave but he doesn't want to get inside Annalise's car. He says he'd feel safer on foot. The blaze is intensifying, extreme heat radiating from it as it approaches. Tendrils of fire lick at the palm fronds overhanging the parking lot. Visibility is declining rapidly. The air is becoming dry and scratchy to breathe. There's no time for Annalise to negotiate.

All she can do is wish Freeman and Atina good luck as they stagger off in the direction of the ocean. But as they walked away, a giant, it's like a burning bush or something, like a giant piece of flaming debris was like launched over my head. It probably had traveled a full block or two. It was really high up in the air and it came crashing down between the two of us.

And I just remember the force of it hitting the ground. It kind of like oxygenated the fire and it just burst into this giant ball of flames. It was something I had of a movie. It's like, you see these two people you love walking away from you. And then this like wall of fire just appears between the two of you

and you just know, okay, like now I'm on my own now i'm by myself here annalise rushes to her car she throws it into gear and reverses out of the parking lot, the wheels screeching over hot tarmac. As soon as she pulls out into the road, it's like a light switch is flipped. Suddenly, she is plunged into darkness as the smoke envelops her. It's like the darkest, darkest black, where it's like your eyes are seeking something. They're like straining themselves just to see something. And there's just nothing there.

It's like you almost feel like you're crazy and you want to just like rub your eyes just to get like a little pinhole of light to come through because it just feels insane that you could have your eyes open and you're looking around and you know it's daylight and you can't see anything. Annalise inches forwards.

She squints through the windscreen, her foot hovering above the accelerator. It's a narrow, one-way street lined with parked cars. Fortunately, she's driven down here countless times before. She can find her way through muscle memory, where to turn, where to brake. She just hopes nobody steps out into the road. I was just like blindly accelerating forward, just hoping to get out of the smoke.

And that is the scariest feeling, is like feeling like you're fighting for your own survival and knowing like I could hurt somebody right now. And that's the last thing I want to do is hurt anybody who's also in the same position I am. Eventually, she reaches the stop sign at the end of the road. She turns right and pulls out onto Front Street, Lahaina's seafront promenade, lined with shops and restaurants. The air seems a little clearer here. Annalise can see more than a few inches ahead. But as she peers down Front Street, she's met with a terrifying sight.

A sea of red brake lights stretching the entire length of the road. It's complete gridlock. Meanwhile, over her shoulder, the fire must be gaining on her. Where I had left from, like up the mountain, we knew the fire was coming from that direction. And the smoke seemed heavier on the kind of more southern side of Front Street. You're just looking at the air quality as like your best indicator of where there is or isn't fire. And there was better air quality, kind of like the north direction. Front Street is usually bustling with happy locals and tourists.

Now it looks like a war zone. Pedestrians rush along the sidewalks, covering their mouths with their t-shirts, weaving their way through the hazy air. Suddenly, there's a frantic hammering on Annalise's car window. She turns to see a terrified man's face pressed up against the glass. As I was kind of sitting there in bumper-to-bumper traffic and getting my thoughts together, a tourist, I think he was a tourist, his name was Naeem, jumped into my car. I just remember turning around and asking him what his name was, and I asked him to please be kind.

And I just remember, I was like, I just let a strange man into my car in the middle of an emergency. Like this could be a disaster. And I just turned out. I was like, what's your name? Please be kind. A tourist, Naeem, takes a moment to steady himself. His chest rises and falls with short, panicked breaths. When he looks at Annalise, his eyes are filled with pleading urgency. He wants her to turn around and drive back inland. He was concerned about the smoke. He wanted me to turn up the mountain, and I was like, no, dude, that's where I came from. And I was like, and you came from the south, right? And he's like, yeah, I came from there, and there's fire down there, too.

So that was kind of when I confirmed, like, oh, yeah, there's definitely fire in the more south direction of us. There's definitely fire coming down the mountain. And so we're just trying to get north. Now Annalise knows for sure the only safe direction is north. But snarled up in this traffic, they're going nowhere fast. She and Naeem sit breathing the stale air circulated by the car's AC. Annalise pushes the pedal, inching forward in tiny increments.

But whatever progress they appear to be making is misleading. And ultimately I realized that the creeping forward that we were experiencing was just because cars were pulling out into the different lanes, onto the grass. People were just trying to move however they could, but they weren't actually getting through. The road is totally jammed.

Annalise glances over at Naeem. He's growing more and more frantic. He wants to get out and continue on foot, but Annalise shakes her head. They're better off inside the car, where they can breathe the filtered air. By now, the smoke has caught up with them, billowing overhead in great black clouds, belched out by the raging fire, which is now surely only one or two streets over.

Naim, however, seems insistent, and Anneliese isn't going to force him to stay against his will. She turns to her passenger and tells him bluntly. If you want to get out, if you want to go somewhere, like, do whatever you want. But, like, I'm sorry you're not going to drive my car either. Like, I'm going to stay on my course. This is what I'm doing. And I remember him getting out of my car

and ran forwards the direction we were all trying to travel, and he just ran, like, headlong into the smoke, and I just saw him disappear into the smoke. And then I started, like, waiting. 30 seconds went by. It felt like a minute had gone by, and he's, like, not coming back out of this very thick smoke. And so I remember just taking a moment of panic of, like,

why did I just let this man run off? Like, oh, my God, he just ran into, he just killed himself. Her eyes search the wall of smoke, willing name to appear, but he doesn't. The seconds crawl by. And then. Fortunately, he came back out a couple of seconds after I was really starting to panic.

And he came up and he pounded on my car window and I rolled it down and he confirmed me. He's like, it's all flames up there. It's all on fire. Everything's on fire. There's no way out. Before Annalise can speak, Naeem turns and runs back the way he came, disappearing once more into the surging ash cloud. She sits there, motionless, her options running out. Slowly, she turns her head to the left. The grey ocean rolls against the shoreline, waves crashing against the rock wall which separates Front Street from the Pacific. The fire has Lahaina surrounded. It's closing in on all sides, all directions, except for one.

That was kind of the moment that I realized I am trapped in like a horseshoe ring of fire and my only out is the ocean. It's just before 5pm. Annalise pulls her car off the road onto a scrubby patch of grass. Beyond the wooden rooftops, she can see the red glow of the fire. She can hear the crackle of the flames as they feed on the dry timber structures. Soon, the blaze will make its way to the seafront. But that moment hasn't arrived just yet. And her maritime training

has taught her to wait until the very last moment before abandoning ship. One of the things that they teach you in an abandoned ship drill, they say that you should not get off of your boat until you are stepping up into a life raft. You should never step down into a life raft. It should be an upwards motion into a life raft, which is basically saying you should stay on your boat until the second that you have to get off. Annalise gives herself an ultimatum.

When the building next to her catches fire, that's when she'll go. Not a moment before, and not a second later. In the meantime, she strains her ears for sirens. But it's unlikely that any firefighters will be able to reach them. The Maui County Fire Department simply doesn't have the resources to cope with something of this magnitude. We have a minimal force of firefighters on this island that we're on anyways, and they can only fight the edge. They can't just go drop themselves into the center and fight the middle,

and we were smack dab in the middle. We were just like, how could they get to us? Far more in hope than expectation, Annalise scans the road, searching the haze for flashing blue lights. But nothing materializes. Instead, what does materialize are two stooped figures slowly emerging through the smoke. After about a minute of sitting there, I saw, unbelievably, Freeman and Atina walk up and kind of situate themselves right across the street from where I'd parked my car. They had made it the exact same distance that I had.

Holding her breath, Annalise jumps out of the car. Through the blizzard of swirling ash and embers, she crosses the streets to where Freeman and Atina have just arrived at the water's edge. From the road, the seawall that separates Front Street from the ocean is about knee-high. On the other side, it's a five-foot jumble of boulders, sloping steeply into the churning waves. All along the shoreline, desperate people are clambering down the rocks, where they're at least partly sheltered from the encroaching flames. Etina is in the process of helping Freeman across the wall, when Anneliese runs up to

them. It's a bittersweet reunion. Thankfully everyone remains unharmed, but the hardest part of this ordeal is surely still to come. Annalise and Atina help Freeman across the partition. Once he's situated with his back against a boulder, Annalise returns to her car. She has one final job to do before she abandons ship. I took that moment to go back to my car for a minute and gathered the things that I had left there, took a couple minutes in the fresh air.

And in those couple of minutes in the fresh air, I also, it was dinner time for my baby bird. And so I fed it another meal because I didn't know how long I was going to be in the ocean. And I figured it would be really, really hungry by the time I got back. Baby birds need to eat frequently. And I think I hadn't really wrapped my head around the fact that I would lose my baby bird. But I felt in the moment the safest place for it would be in my car because it certainly would not do well in the smoke. And I was about to get into the ocean,

which is also not where baby birds belong. With a heavy heart, Annalise shuts Chickadee's birdcage. Then she takes one final breath of clean air, grabs her bag from the backseat, and heads out into the thickening smoke. The fire has now reached the buildings along Front Street. Blistering waves of heat scorch Annalise's back as she approaches the seawall. Before climbing over the barrier,

she removes her cell phone from her bag. She goes to send a last-minute text to her mom, explaining what's happening and where she is. But when it comes to writing the message, she stops. I remember trying to communicate, like, how do you tell somebody that you're about to die, that you love, that you want them to know where you are so that somebody comes for you, but you feel like that is your goodbye. And I look back and I laugh so hard at my text messages now because they're ridiculous. I said something like, Lahaina's gone. Everything's burned down.

My apartment's gone. I'm about to jump into the ocean. Dot, dot, dot. LOL. Because I couldn't even, I look back, I'm like, wow, that's just the mark of a woman who's having a hard time processing what is happening right there. Annalise taps out the message and presses send. Then she climbs over the seawall and makes her way down to Etina and Freeman, who are sheltering on the rocks near the waves.

Choosing the right position requires careful thought. They need to be able to fully submerge themselves in the ocean if necessary, while also staying close enough to the rocks to avoid being carried off by the current. Some people are clinging onto bits of debris and swimming out into the open ocean. The site fills Annalise with dread. I felt very strongly like that would be one of the worst calls we could make is going really far out because you're losing control in that moment. You are fighting against currents that are twice as strong now because of the winds. You're in murky, murky water and you're

at unfortunately prime time feeding hour for sharks. And I'm not one of those people that likes to strike fear in people's hearts about sharks. There really aren't, there's nothing to be feared with sharks unless you're in literally this exact situation. This is the situation you should be scared of sharks because it's surfy water. It's murky water. There's hundreds of panicked people in the water flailing around. It is the worst place to be in terms of sharks. And there's tons of sharks in Hawaii.

Maui has the highest amount of shark attacks in Hawaii. Annalise urges those around her to stay close to the rocks. But for some, risking the sharks and the currents is the better of two horrendous options. There are now approximately 100 people gathered around this rocky length of coastline, pinned between seething ocean and raging fire. Meanwhile, as the inferno builds along Front Street, pieces of burning debris are being carried by the wind,

dropping over their heads. Charred objects land around them in the water, sizzling and hissing. Stuff was blown, huge chunks of debris. I think that's one of those other things that's hard to express. It's like, this is not, you know, little things. This is giant sheets of plywood, two by four, like huge pieces of debris coming off of buildings and things. And so people were grabbing onto stuff

and floating out with that. And so I could tell there was at least a hundred people and the people that were drifting out into the ocean were drifting out farther than I could see them. They were disappearing out into the smoke. Annalise and Atina wet their hair with seawater to protect against burning embers. They lift their t-shirts to their mouths and suck air through the fabric. They assist strangers too, helping parents dampen their kids' hair, advising them to breathe through their clothes. The Highness community spirit has never been needed more than now. Amid the commotion, Annalise mentions to Atina that she'd tried to send a text to her mum,

but she isn't sure if the message got through. Atina hands Annalise her own phone. She has service, and Annalise can call anyone she wants. Annalise dials the number. Soon, her mom's muffled voice appears at the end of the line. I was able to call my mom and talk to her for just a couple of seconds, and it was so nice to just be able to tell her what was going on. But as I was talking to her, this woman comes running up to us, like screaming in hysterics. She's absolutely freaking out. And she's like motioning that like, I have to give her the phone.

She's like, give me the phone, give me the phone. And so I felt like I had at least, like I had talked to my mom. She knew where I was. She knew what was going on. She knew I was in an emergency. And so I was like, hey, mama, I have to go. Like somebody needs the phone. We all have to call somebody quickly.

So I told her I loved her and hung up. Annalise hands the phone to the panicking woman, whose name she learns is Michelle. She also learns the reason for her distress. I found out a little bit of her story before she made her phone call. She was on her way to go and save her dad. Her dad was elderly and was in a building that was a little bit north of us. And it was basically like on the other side

of this wall of fire that was blocking us. And she couldn't get through and she was devastated because he was waiting for her. He wasn't gonna evacuate until she got there. Personal tragedies are unfolding everywhere. Most of these human stories will remain hidden from Annalise until they emerge later in the shape of statistics, death tolls, and hospital records.

After a few nail-biting moments, Michelle manages to get through to her father and warn him to evacuate. But this does little to calm her down. I remember her husband was with her and he looked overwhelmed. He didn't know how to calm her and he was just, he was heartbroken as well. And I just remember feeling like this was a situation that I could help with. I was like, I can do something here.

And we had already contacted her dad. He was going to go. And so I just remember grabbing her by the shoulders and looking her in the eye and telling her. I said, Michelle, I am going to go. And so I just remember grabbing her by the shoulders and looking her in the eye and telling her. I said, Michelle, I am going to live today. That's my goal. I'm going to live. And if you would like to live, I recommend that you stay with me because I'm going to live.

Michelle nods, seeming to draw strength from Annalise's fighting talk. Giving voice to her own resolve has a marked effect on Anneliese too. She's determined to outlast these flames. But all the while, the blaze is intensifying. Ocean spray mingles with ash and debris. Just before the sunlight disappears behind a screen of smoke, Anneliese

looks at Atina and Freeman and sees her own fear mirrored in their faces. They have no idea what the night has in store, but one thing is clear. If they are going to survive this, then they must stick together. Next time, we return to Annalise and to the wildfire that continues to rage in Lahaina. Some of these pieces of debris were so large that they would hit the ocean and they wouldn't go out. The water wouldn't extinguish them because it wasn't reaching all of the different parts of that burning debris that was now floating on the surface. And so the waves would start pushing flaming debris at you even the ocean could burn you that's next time on real survival stories you can listen to part two of analysis story right now without waiting a week by subscribing to noiser plus